Blog posts from the staff of The Daily News & The Memphis News

Rains comes to Bleu from Interstate Hotels and Resorts, where he was executive chef at the Memphis Marriott. He’s also taught as chef instructor at L’ Ecole Culinaire, and before that he owned and served as executive chef at Roustica after serving as executive chef at Equestria Restaurant and Lounge.

At Bleu, Rains is partnering with local vendors to provide the freshest ingredients and to keep as much of his food spending here in Memphis and its surrounding areas as possible.

The appointment of Rains comes at the two-year anniversary mark for Bleu, which also has unveiled a new fall/winter menu that offers a variety of fresh, local fare and top-quality seafood flown in daily.

Looking ahead to the prospect of new fights with Republicans in Congress as a result of the conclusion of the government shutdown, Memphis congressman Steve Cohen referred to Tea Partiers as “domestic enemies” in an MSNBC interview Sat., Oct. 19:

“I obviously do not have an opportunity to go within the conference, the Republican — we call it a caucus, they call it a conference. But I know some of the members there, and a lot of those members — they’re rabid, they’re sophomoric, literally, their second term in Congress, never worked in politics before, and they think they are somehow like — it’s all talked in military terms. They think they’re some kind of guerrillas there to strike a blow for freedom.”

Cohen continued that congressmen take an oath to protect the country against enemies foreign and domestic and that “these are the domestic enemies.”

Next up is the Downtown Slider Crawl Nov. 6. Four Downtown chefs will create special slider-related items for participants to enjoy. The restaurants that participants will visit, as with all Dishcrawl events, will remain a secret until 48 hours beforehand.